All language subtitles for 2235_eng

PICTURE UP, B-ROLL

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Hey
Dennis. Dennis you're

running this mother fucking show.

I'am going to quit halfway
through the end unless I get

another bottle of wine
sitting by me. Okay?

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE:
Dennis! Get him a bottle!

For Christ's sake Dennis!

a PICTURES FROM EARTH presentation

STEVE RICHMOND: Bukowski was
telling me if you're parents begin

to like their work it's getting bad
you know and if the cops are around

something good must be happening.
And what you need is life. Your work

has to be alive and you�ve got to you know
drink, write and fuck. That was his advice.

MAN: And I heard him flick
his bick and then I heard

sssssss, like the singing
of hair you know and I looked

over and I could see him in the,
he had this, the, the flame was up

really high and he, and he went
like ssss and then he went rrrrrrr.

BARBET SCHROEDER: He
called me and said um you

motherfucker. You put something
in my wine. And I said no I

didn�t. He said yes. He said you put LSD
in my wine because you want to fuck my wife.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: Oh yeah the time

he pulled this blade on the maitre�d
at the Polo Lounge. There was that.

JOHN MARTIN: And the cop says you know
what are you doing? Stop. And he said

I�m going to throw the
couch through the window

and the cop drew his gun
and he said no you�re not.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: But they caught me
in the bar in the old days. He was a

good duker. And that�s
the ultimate compliment.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: Finally I see him
across the street from me and he�s

unzipped himself and he�s taking

his cock out and he�s not waving it but
he�s, it�s just dangling there and he�s

running up and down the street and
people are screaming and horrified. And

finally they gather around him.

Call the police. Call the, covering their
children�s eyes. Call the police.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: The creative act
is done at that goddamn machine right

here. See this fucking
thing? That�s where it�s done.

LIZA WILLIAMS: He talks a lot about

his sexual prowess. He referred
to his penis as his purple onion.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I saw
him looking me and I ducked

quickly forward ducking my head
into the night. Move quickly

forward. You never say duck and
ducking. That�s the first thing

you learn you know. But I fucked
it up because I�m drunk on wine.

BUKOWSKI
BORN INTO THIS

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Forgive me. You
have my soul and I have your money.

B-ROLL

INTERVIEWER: Why?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I�ll tell you why.
All of the, sometime in my life this

time might come a little bit. Like
guys marching in on me with cameras and

all that shit. Somehow I almost felt
it and knew it. And I was always going

to crash it down and say
f-, jam it up your ass.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: You know uh the
young blondes with the tight pussies

came too late.
The cameras came too late.

Don�t grin at me like that.
It�s true. They came too late. I�m

too strong. The gods have really put
a good shield over me man. They really

have. I�ve been toughened
up at the right time

and the right place.
They�re still good to me.

B-ROLL

TAYLOR HACKFORD: Once Ferlinghetti up

in San Francisco invited Bukowski to
go to San Francisco to read at the City

Lights Poet�s Theater. I had never heard
him read actually. It was very interesting.

TAYLOR HACKFORD: We just
met. We started to develop

a relationship and bang this
thing happened. So I said

I�m going to travel. Now
I had this, this miniscule budget.

I decided to
shoot in black and white.

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: City Lights in

the last year has started presenting
American poets who I believe are major

writers in this country and at the

moment like what else is
happening be-, besides Bukowski?

TAYLOR HACKFORD: We go up in the
plane. He�s drinking scotch. He got

pretty drunk and a little silly.
And I was shooting the whole thing.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
No I�ll be all right.

I�ll be all right. I�ll be all right.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I wish I were more
nervous. You read better when you�re a

little nervous you know. Really it�s like you know
before a fight or something. You�re nervous.

TAYLOR HACKFORD: He arrives in
San Francisco for this reading at

Ferlinghetti�s Poet�s Theater and
my God it was like the second coming.

B-ROLL

TAYLOR HACKFORD: We walked into this
big gymnasium and there were bleachers

set up and you know there were like
six, seven hundred people there.

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI:
They�re lining up around the corner.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Do you have a little
pot on the stage I can vomit in?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: [TALKING OVER] No

I�m not kidding. No cheap Italian
wine man. You guys really fucked me up.

TAYLOR HACKFORD: He was a little drunk

and I think he was building himself
up and I think he was a little scared.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I�m in great shape. Down here.

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: Here we go.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Oh shit.

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: Ladies and
gentlemen, Charles Bukowski.

B-ROLL

TAYLOR HACKFORD: In the poetry

readings he did in Los Angeles where
there would be fifteen people, twenty

people. You know get thirty people it
was a crowd. And here we walked into

hundreds and hundreds and
it was a loud rowdy audience.

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Do I know you? One
more beer. I�ll take you all, all of you.

B-ROLL

TAYLOR HACKFORD: And at the same time
it was a certain electricity in the

air. But he didn�t have to share the
podium. This was a Bukowski event.

B-ROLL

TAYLOR HACKFORD: Bukowski was a fairly

well known underground figure in Los
Angeles at the time because he wrote a

column at the L.A. Free Press called

the Notes of a Dirty Old Man. One week
he wrote this article in there about

going to San Francisco to read and

having these uh punk asshole uh stupid
filmmakers along and he was trying to

kind of help them along and organizing
this and that because these people

bumble through and asking
stupid questions and so on.

TAYLOR HACKFORD: It was quite an

entertaining kind of funny piece. So
I read it and I, I, you know I saw him

later and I said uh, I said hey, I said

I read that article. He says yeah
baby what�d you think? I said well I

thought it was full of shit man.

I said I, I, you forget I have the film.
You�re the guy who�s drunk on the plane

making a fool out of yourself and you
made me. He says hey baby when I write

I�m the hero of my shit. And he says
you got your film, you do your film.

B-ROLL

born like this into this as the
chalk faces smile as Mrs. Death laughs

as political landscapes dissolve as the

oily fish sit out their oily prey
we are born like this, into this

into hospitals which are so expensive

that it�s cheaper to die into lawyers
who charge so much it�s cheaper to

plead guilty into a country where the
jails are full and the madhouses closed

into a place where the masses
elevate fools into rich heroes

born into this walking and living
through this dying because of this

castrated debauched
disinherited because of this

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: The fingers reach
toward an unresponsive god. The

fingers reach for the bottle, the
pill, the powder. We are born into the

sorrowful deadliness. There will
be open and unpunished murder in the

streets. It will be guns and roving

mobs. Land will be useless. Food
will become a diminishing return.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Nuclear power will
be taken over by the many. Explosions

will continually shake the earth.

Radiated men will eat the flesh of
radiated men. The rotting bodies of

men and animals will stink in the
dark wind. And there will be the most

beautiful silence never heard.

Born out of that, the sun hidden
there, awaiting the next chapter.

B-ROLL

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: His full name
was Henry Charles Bukowski, Jr. and his

father called him Henry with a very
strong gruff voice so Hank was sort of

the nickname for Henry. And Charles,
just Charles Bukowski and especially

being a writer sounded a little
better than Henry Bukowski.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI
WIFE

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Shit I don�t know if

I can make this on just two bottles.
It may be a three bottle reading.

B-ROLL

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Liquor�s like a

symphony or like a classical song
or something. You don�t use it as a

downer. You use it as to leap up into

the sky when you�re in pain or
when you, you have this pressure.

B-ROLL

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I am a slugger.
Now if I start reading this poem.

MAN IN AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: And I hear this
man�s voice rising above the sound of

my poem I�m going to go over to him
and kick his living ass right out of the

city physically. I�m going to kick his
ass right out of this goddamn hall.

So watch it man. I�ll take
you like a motherfucker.

B-ROLL

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Hank when did you realize you were a
writer that you had this talent?

Nobody ever realizes they�re a writer
They only think they�re a writer.

So when did you think you were a writer?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Well I was, I guess
I was about uh thirteen years old.

Then I was covered with these boils and

uh my first writing I did I had
this notebook, you know for school.

I just found a pencil and I started writing.
and I filled this notebook full of words.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: And I guess that was

the first time the
mechanism had exposed itself.

And it felt pretty good sitting there

writing in a notebook with the
pencil. And I wrote on and on

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: And it seemed ve-, a

very easy, nice thing to do and it
still remains an easy nice thing to do.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: I would say after
that he was a writer. That was it. He

was going to L.A. City College.

It�s still there on Vermont. And he
walked into the journalism class.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I had two years
of college but I didn�t do anything. I

just laid on the lawn you know and
missed classes and uh I couldn�t get a

job as a journalist. They said fill
out on an application and we�ll let you

know. And it�s a very hard job to
get on a newspaper. It�s a very hard.

So it was not your decision that you
didn�t work as a journalist?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: No if they, I think
if they had of hired me I would have

been a journalist. In a way I�m glad they
didn�t because what could I write about?

B-ROLL

In December, 1941 the U.S. became
directly involved in World War II

Bukowski was 21 years old

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Oh no.

How did you manage not to go there?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: The psychiatrist
would not take me.

B-ROLL

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: He asked me do you
believe in the war. I said no. Are you

willing to, to go to the war? I
said yes. He said you�re a very

intelligent man uh you come to a party
at my house next Wednesday night. We�re

going to have artists,
writers, painters, lawyers.

B-ROLL

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: We want you, I want

you to come to my party next Wednesday
night. Will you come to my party?

I said no.
He said okay you can go.

I said what do you mean I can go. He
said you don�t have to go to the war.

I have to shoot a portrait now.

INTERVIEWER: Well let�s get this
picture out of the way.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: All right.

INTERVIEWER: [INAUDIBLE].

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Close together?

B-ROLL

What is your definition of sex?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Sex is something you
can, you do when you can�t sleep.

Who was your first woman?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Well that was the
three hundred pound whore.

Jesus Christ.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I didn�t have my
first piece of ass until I was twenty- four years old.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Well I wasn�t a pretty guy.
I didn�t have any money. I was a bum.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: [TALKING OVER] Sorry

you know. Like I never went to the
high school ball or nothing like that.

I was an outcast. So I met this lady

in a bar and uh she seemed to like me,
first woman that ever liked me you know.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: She was big but she
was a woman. What the hell? And I was

drunk and she was drunk. We drank
our beer and then I got into it. So I

worked and I worked and I worked and I
worked because I wanted to prove I was

a man you know the first time.

Boy I really tried. I said boy if
this is sex it sure is lousy.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: This is what they�re
talking about in the high school locker

rooms? So I finally, I don�t know if I
made it. I probably did. But anyhow I

woke up and we�re both laying there and
she�s snoring on her back. And I look

over this huge beast is laying there. And
we�d broken the bed both legs and the butt.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: We were like on a
hill. The bed was down like that. So

then you know uh I rushed to my pants
and my wallet was missing. So I said

you fucking whore you took my wallet.
She said no, no, no I didn�t. And I

said get out of here you bitch.

I said I know that you�ve got up your
cunt. There�s room up there.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I started to learn
how to talk this way then. And I tied

up the legs. I was tying up the legs

of the bed. I reached under there and
I felt something on the rug. It was my

wallet. I said oh that poor old girl.
I felt awful you know. Forget the

image. I have a heart.
And I said oh shit.

She may not have been
much but I used her wrongly.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: So right away I ran

down to the bar where I�d met her.
Evidently she told the bartender.

And I walked in and I said listen is
uh I forget her name, I said is Son-, is

Marie here? He kind of
said we can�t serve you.

B-ROLL

Bukowski spent parts of the early
1940s roaming the United States

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: I think one of the
reasons Bukowski wandered around the

country was very simply a young man�s

need to see his country. And I think
the other reason was he wanted to delve

at the life. He needed experience.

And so he went, he bought a ticket on a
trail ways and he went all the way to

Florida, as far as he could go. And he

said to get as far away from my father
as possible. Probably that�s true.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: Then he headed back
through New Orleans and he was in El

Paso. All through the forties he lived
in one rooming house or one little cold

water hotel room after another looking
for that golden sentence, you know

wanting to write that story that
would put him up there in the charts.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I would get a common
laborer�s job somewhere for a week or

two and then live in a cheap room and
type. Uh I used to live on one candy

bar a day. Cost a nickel. I always
remember the candy bar. It was called

Payday. That was my Payday at five
cents. And that candy bar tasted so good.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
I�d have it at night.

I�d take one bite and it was so
beautiful. I wrote four or five short

stories a week during this time

and I had them out everywhere.
They came bouncing back.

TAYLOR HACKFORD: He was looking for
his art and he got rejections. And

basically what he was getting you�re

not enough. Not you�re not good.
You�re not good enough. And he heard

it and he understood it. Now at that
point you can make a choice. Oh well

to hell with it. Throw it out.

I�m going to go get a profession, do
something. Bukowski never did that.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I was laying in bed
one night and I said I�ll just quit.

To hell with it. And another voice in
me said don�t quit. Save a tiny little

ember, a spark and never give them that
spark because as long as you have that

spark you can start
the greatest fire again.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I was working at a
lady�s dress shop and they made me work

two hours overtime.
I still kept the spark.

I said I will not quit. I will
not let them kill me. So I�m walking

out and uh two guys in the office

smoking cigars. Hey uh Bukowski come
here a minute. They were laughing at

me and I knew they were laughing at me

because I was just a slave and I�m
standing there. So I went home.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: It was a very long
walk and I remember the trees were

frozen. It was a winter. It was in

St. Louis. And the landlady had
put these letters under my door.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: And I opened the one
and it said we�ve accepted you�re short story.

I said oh. The fire I saved

has a chance. But the funniest
thing is they took a bad story.

B-ROLL

But out of hundreds of stories that

Bukowski submitted,
only a few were published

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: The young writer

growing up in the thirties and forties
wanted to be in Harper�s, Atlantic

Monthly. That�s where Hemingway and
Cerulean, that�s where the heroes published.

JOYCE FANTE: I don�t think it was quite the market for uh. The main magazines during the forties were pretty much published by eastern intellectuals. John Steinbeck had a, a hard time getting recognized. Western writers just were not very much appreciated and, and uh recognized as they are today.

JOYCE FANTE
WIFE OF AUTHOR JOHN FANTE

By the late 1940s, Bukowski was
back in Los Angeles to stay.

Here he met the woman who
became his first girlfriend.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I was twenty-four,

twenty-five. She was around thirty-
five. And she just accepted me.

JOHN MARTIN: It was the first woman
he ever really had a relationship with.

She was ten years older than he was. She
was born in 1910 and he was born in 1920.

DOM MUTO: Uh he seemed to be all alone
except for this woman he lived with

that he would refer to sometimes uh in a
derogatory way, the way men refer to women.

DOM MUTO
BUKOWSKI COWORKER

DOM MUTO: Uh I saw her once and it fit
his description of her, which was she

had a fat ass and it was good to
lean up against in the wintertime.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: She had beautiful
legs. Wore high heels. Knew how to

cross her legs with the skirt just so,

kicking the heel like this and
talking all kinds of shit you know.

DOM MUTO: Uh if you like them big.
You know? She did not, she did not

have the good looks of a, of a, of
sophistication or a classy woman.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: With beautiful legs

you always figure even though you�ve
only been there once or twice there

might be something else up there

besides a cunt. You know? There might
be something really marvelous this time.

It could be a cunt but it could

be something about looking at the legs
makes you dream. Not saying there�s

anything wrong with a cunt but I�m
saying you always imagine some extra

magic when you�re looking at
the outside portion of a female.

JOHN MARTIN: She would just take off
for a month and leave him and then come

back only because she�d exhausted all
those opportunities out there or was

sick and tired of what was going there
and would come back to him. He was

kind of like a home base only. They
didn�t have a really domestic life together.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: It was continuous
going into bars, getting into trouble,

getting kicked out of rooms.
It was a tension that just—

HARRY DEAN STANTON V.O.: To find your

lady already drunk, dirty dishes in
the sink, the dog unfed, the flowers un

watered, the bed unmade, the ashtrays full
of punched out lipstick smeared cigarettes.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Those days were so
long. We were always drunk, getting

kicked out. It was like being
in a war that never really ended.

HARRY DEAN STANTON: Oh you asshole.

What are you doing in there? Playing
with yourself? You goddamned whore,

what do you know about anything? Sit down
on your dead ass and suck it at the vino.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: But there was

a liveliness there because we both
didn�t care for shit you know.

HARRY DEAN STANTON V.O.: Don�t hit me.

Don�t hit me. You�d hit me but you
wouldn�t hit a man. Hell no I wouldn�t

hit a man. Do you think I�m crazy? Hey
where the hell are you going? I�m going

to the fucking bar. Not without
me. Not without me buster.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: And I thought

I really had something.
I did. I had lots of trouble.

HARRY DEAN STANTON V.O.:
To get our stools,

to sit before the long mirror,
to tell the bartender vodka seven.

Everything was far away then. The post
office, the world, the past and the future.

HARRY DEAN STANTON: To have our drinks

arrive to take the first hit in the
dark bar. Life couldn�t get any better.

What�s your definition of love?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Love? It�s kind
of like you know you see a fog in the

morning when you wake up
before the sun comes out?

It�s just that little
while and then it burns away.

Really?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Yeah. Quickly.

It�s just, love is a fog that burns
with the first daylight of reality.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Okay well this is
the post office where I carried mail

for two and a half years coming up.
That was a terrible place for me.

In April 1952, Hank took a job
with the U.S. Post Office.

DOM MUTO: There was about four or five
of us that were substitute carriers at

the Oakwood station. I think
especially first impressions were bad

with him. The guy was, was uh didn�t
wear clothes well. And he himself was

big which could have been an asset but he
carried himself like a big gallut you know.

DOM MUTO: And he had this heavy face

with these heavy features
that had to grow on you.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Here it is. See

what a? United States Post Office.
Two and a half years of hell, pure hell.

DOM MUTO: Oh he hated it but don�t
blame the job. It was him. He just

hated rules and regulations. He did as
little as possible and he and the boss

were enemies and at odds and the boss
saw to it that he got all the dirty

crap whenever he could
dish it out to him.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I wasn�t

enthusiastic about my job as the others
were. In fact I hated it and I guess

you could tell. And how can you hate

a good job for the United States
government? Lifetime security.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: To the postmaster
of Los Angeles, California,

please accept my resignation
as a regular carrier

effective three eleven fifty-five.

I find this occupation is detrimental to
my health. I am bothered with ulcers

and the pressure and demands of the job

are aggravating my condition. The post
office had treated me well. It is only

that I must seek a more congenial

occupation and I regret the
severance, Henry C. Bukowski, Jr.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I had ulcers you
know for a couple of years, very painful.

I ignored them. I thought I was

a tough guy and I, finally it just
broke open. The blood came out of my

mouth and my ass and uh you�d be

surprised how much blood there is in
a person. It keeps coming. And it�s purple.

Anyhow they took me to the

County General Hospital and uh
that was a rough trip.

B-ROLL

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: As I left the

hospital a doctor told me you take
one more drink and you�re dead.

See doctors lie to you often. I was
supposed to die and uh I just didn�t.

And it kind of felt like uh I had a
free life, an extra life to work with.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
So I came out of there,

got a job driving a truck,
drank a lot of beer each night,

bought a typewriter and, and uh just
started typing. Only this time it all

came out poetry. The
prose had gone somewhere.

JOHN MARTIN: It�s like the man who

rose from the dead and he had a whole
new life to live and he did. I mean I

think that�s often the case with
a near fatal illness in mid-life.

It sends someone off in an entirely
rejuvenated direction.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: So I started writing
hundreds of poems and sending them out.

You know poetry doesn�t pay anything
but it was just the form I needed to

kind of a passionate, pleasurable
selfish nice form where you could

scream a little bit. You know? I
guess I needed to scream a little bit.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: All I can say is

that while he was drinking all through
the fifties and sixties he produced

more poetry than almost any other

person on the planet that I know of.
The discipline of sending those poems

out because you get lazy.
You have to

go to the stationary shop and get the
hundred envelopes and you have to go to

the post office and get, maybe the fact
that he worked in the post office.

It takes an enormous amount of
energy and he did it every day.

WILLIAM PACKARD: I was asking someone

what Freud would have thought of the
twentieth century and she said there�s

one thing Freud could not have foreseen, Walt
Disney making everything cheap, everything nice.

WILLIAM PACKARD PUBLISHER
NEW YORK QUARTERLY

WILLIAM PACKARD: When I wrote something

about Bukowski to try to justify why I
was publishing him. I said he�s devoted

to the de-Disneyfication of all of us.

Someone has to kick the
Mickey Mouse out of our heads.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: He despised Mickey
Mouse, especially his hands. I think he

has three fingers. He could not handle

the fact that the power uh over multi
- millions of human beings was in the

hands of this three fingered foolish
creature that taught you nothing

whatsoever,
that expressed nothing real,

total absurd fucking fantasy,
not even good, not even creative.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI WIFE

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: He was appalled

by Mickey Mouse. And I said well what
about Walt Disney? He, he was a crazy

sort of a guy. He was eccentric.

He was a genius. He was amazing. He was
a visionary. He had all of these ideas.

And he said yeah but for what?
Uh well

I said to expand the uh imaginations
and fantasies of little children.

Yeah to this three fingered son of
a bitch who has no soul for Christ�s sake.

Mickey Mouse doesn�t
have a fucking soul.

B-ROLL

In June 1955, only a few months after

leaving the Post Office,
Bukowski tried to get rehired.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: Dear sirs I was a
regular carrier Oakwood Station with

over three years service. Last April
I resigned from the service. This letter

is written in hopes that I may be
reinstated as a substitute carrier.

I gave as my reason for
resignation ill health.

NEELI CHERKOVSKY
FRIEND AND BIOGRAPHER

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: This I will state

bluntly was an untruth. I realize now
that I was in the wrong and if I had

only taken a little time to cool off

and be objective I never would have
handed in my resignation. I hope to

prove to you that I can be a carrier

worthy of my salt. Oh this is
hilarious. The guy�s talking corny stuff.

Worthy of my salt.
The most un - corny guy

in the world you know. But I
guess he�s thinking of his audience.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: I promise that should

you decide in my favor that you will
never regret the decision. Sincerely H.

Bukowski, Jr., Los Angeles. You know it
really reads like somebody who grew up

in the depression frankly and
who�d been through hard times.

B-ROLL

Bukowski was finally rehired
at the Post Office in 1958

You spent twelve years
in the post office?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Really about fifteen
because I was a carrier for three years

and then I stuck for twelve,
eleven and half, stuck eleven.

But how could a man like you do that

for such a long time? It�s such
a stupid work only doing this…

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: All my work was
stupid but it was at night, that�s

nights because I can�t
sleep nights anyhow.

TAYLOR HACKFORD: Of course really what
he was doing was getting a place that

could be his little cave to write in.

Once you get into a bureaucracy
like the Post Office it�s a womb and

ultimately he may have hated it but it

was a regular paycheck. He knew he
was going to get retirement. It was the

thing that he made work for himself.

He never really thought in his mind
that he could live off his writing.

FRANCEYE: He was Bukowski the loner who

never gets lonely. When he was drunk he
had to have some companionship.

And he found my letter and it had my
phone number and that was why he called

me. He was very charismatic anyway but
when he was drunk he was even more so.

FRANCEYE: And so it was like meeting a,
an elemental force of some sort.

When I met him he was going to work at
the post office at night and he would

write every day before
he went to work.

And so he didn�t see me very often. I
had been having unprotected sex for two

or three years, ever since I got

divorced and I did not think
that I was going to get pregnant.

FRANCEYE: So when I did get pregnant I
think that it had to do with the change

in my uh emotional um state because

my reaction to Kennedy�s assassination.
Anyway I did get pregnant. So I decided

I�ll just talk to Hank and see what he

wants to do. So he suggested right off
that we get married. And he was kind of

taken aback that
I didn�t want to get married.

I really loved him but I did not ever
want to get married again.

In the 1960s businessman John Martin built an
impressive collection of first edition books

JOHN MARTIN: I collected everything in

in American literature, Melville,
Henry James, Whitman, Faulkner,

Scott Fitzgerald and then I was looking

for that in post World War II
writing. And I found the Beats.

JOHN MARTIN: You know Ginsberg and, and
Kerouac and then one day I picked up a

copy of The Outsider and read Bukowski

and all these people just faded into
the background. This is the first

letter I wrote Bukowski in October 1965
just saying dear Bukowski boy are you

a good poet. I was not a publisher

at that time and I had no idea
that I would become one.

JOHN MARTIN:
I was managing a large office supply

and office furniture and office
printing company in Los Angeles

and the print shop
was under my control.

And after I had talked to Bukowski
and saw the material he had I decided

I was going to do some
broadsides of Bukowski.

A broadside is the most inexpensive
and the least difficult way

to publish anything. You print one side

of a piece of paper with usually
one poem on it or one paragraph.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: The post office was

a hard gig you know. I�d work all night,
you know eleven years clerking.

Then I had to write, get up and start

drinking and writing, then go to work.
The same thing, get up, drink and write.

JOHN MARTIN: He really did suffer

because first of all he was drinking
too much and he, the fact that he might

skip a day without writing was just

a terror for him. And then in addition
there was a thing there at the post

office called the scheme. It was that

you�d sit in a little Plexiglas box
like a telephone booth. And they�d give

you a hundred pieces of mail and you
have to throw at a certain percentage

of accuracy within a
given amount of time.

FRANCEYE: And that was
a nightmare to him

to imagine that he might fail
the schemes and thus lose his job.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I couldn�t lift my
arms anymore. They wouldn�t lift up

after a night�s work. So I said you either
got to get out of there or die, go crazy.

MARINA BUKOWSKI: I was born on
September 7th, 1964 and I just remember

this little house in Los
Angeles and Hank�s typewriter.

FRANCEYE: Hank worked at night.

Marina didn�t sleep in the daytime.
She didn�t sleep at night either.

I was never getting any sleep. I was
dreadfully unhappy and looking back

I was so sleep deprived
that I was almost insane.

FRANCEYE: And Hank liked a happy woman

in the house. He likes you to be
singing in the kitchen and so on.

FRANCEYE: Well we didn�t really talk
about this until one day he sat down

and said well you�re going
to have to get out.

I�ll pay your rent up to what
I can afford. And we didn�t move very

far away so that he could still see
Marina. I used to take her over to his

place whenever
I ran out of money for food.

I�d call him and say can we
come over for dinner and we did.

MARINA BUKOWSKI: He would make steak
and lima beans, which I loved of course

because he made it. I remember he liked

to rest after he had a big meal and of
course I was little, wanted to play. So

one of the things I liked to play was
Batman and Robin, which went like this.

You be Batman Marina
and you can do things

and I�ll be Robin
because he doesn�t do anything.

MARINA BUKOWSKI: And he would lie on

the bed and just sort of snooze and
I would jump on the bed and be Batman.

Certainly I knew my father was very
different than anyone else�s father.

My mom was
very different too and our

lives were different and
all of our friends were different.

So maybe, maybe that led me
to feel it was positive

instead of feeling like I wanted to fit in
with something that I couldn�t fit in with.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI V.O.:
The genius of the crowd.

There is enough treachery, hatred,
violence, Absurdity in the average

human Being To supply any
given army on any given day.

AND The Best At Murder Are Those Who
Preach Against It. AND The Best At Hate

Are Those Who Preach LOVE. And the best at
war - finally - are those who preach peace.

Beware The Average Man The
Average Woman Beware Their LOVE

Their Love Is Average, Seeks Average
But There Is Genius In Their Hatred

There�s Enough Genius In Their
Hatred To Kill You, To Kill Anybody.

Not Wanting Solitude Not Understanding

Solitude They Will Attempt To Destroy
Anything That Differs From Their Own

Not Being Able To Create Art
They Will Not Understand Art

They Will Consider Their Failure As
Creators Only As A Failure Of The World

Not Being Able To Love Fully They Will

BELIEVE Your Love Incomplete
AND THEN THEY WILL HATE YOU

And Their Hatred Will Be Perfect

Like A Shining Diamond Like A knife Like
A Mountain LIKE A TIGER LIKE hemlock.

Their Finest
ART

CONFESSIONS OF A MAN INSANE ENOUGH
TO LIVE WITH BEASTS 1965 MIMEO PRESS

TAYLOR HACKFORD: John Martin could see.

John Martin could feel
the public out there.

2 BY BUKOWSKI
1968 BLACK SPARROW PRESS

TAYLOR HACKFORD: After a certain number
of books John Martin started to realize

that there was going to be
an audience for this writer.

POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE JUMPING OUT OF
AN 8 STORY WINDOW 1968 POETRY XCHANGE

TAYLOR HACKFORD: And that Bukowski
needed to focus himself full time.

TAYLOR HACKFORD: And Bukowski was very
resistant to that. If I go out there

and lose my tenure at the post office

and lose my gig and my ability to
support myself and we fail where do I

go? CHARLES BUKOWSKI: You see this man
came by while I was still in the post

office, John Martin, he publishes my stuff,
the Black Sparrow. He came by one night.

You see this man came by while I was
still in the post office. John Martin,

he publishes my stuff.
The Black Sparrow.

He came by one night.

JOHN MARTIN: We sat down in his little
dingy room and got out a piece of paper

and we figured out
what it costs him to live.

And he was putting down these amounts
like three dollars and fifty cents a month

for cigarettes and nineteen dollars
for food. As I remember this in uh

mid-sixties. Rent was eighty bucks.

Child support was fifteen. And
we came up with a hundred dollars.

JOHN MARTIN: And I said you could really
get along on a hundred dollars a month?

And he said yes. So I said okay
I�ll give you twenty-five percent of my

income for life whether this works or
not but you�ve got to quit and write

full time. Very reckless.
I didn�t tell my wife.

He says, “I�ll give you a hundred

dollars a month for the rest of your
life whether you write anything or not.

That�s pretty good, you know.

Well it gets the rent anyhow it may not
get the child support but it gets the rent.

So that gave me some heart, you know?

INTERVIEWER: But didn�t you feel kind
of odd like casting your fate with this

guy with this hard
drinking kind of wild man?

JOHN MARTIN: No because that was

all over ridden by the fact of who he
really was, not the distorted part of him

but what, what he really stood for.

And, and, and, and, and, and what made
him important. I mean I, the first time

I read him I said my God this is

today�s Whitman. This is a man of the
street writing for the people in the street.

And when you get an opportunity where,

whether you�re a banker or a,
or a holdup man you go for it.

JOHN MARTIN: And there was Bukowski and
I thought if this guy will commit his

future work to me that�ll start me off.

I said to him at the end of uh 1969 I
know you�re a poet and that�s what I�m

planning to publish and that�s why

I�m starting Black Sparrow Press to publish
your poetry but if you ever could write

a novel that would be really great

because novels sell a lot
better than books of poetry.

JOHN MARTIN: But never thinking that he
could and would. So he started work for me

at one hundred dollars a month on

January 2nd, 1970. And he called me
around the twenty-fifth of January and

said in kind of a low-key
way come and pick it up.

I said well pick up what? And he said
my novel. You said to write a novel

And I said how, how could you write a novel
in three or four weeks? And he said fear.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: He hated the pastoral
beginnings. It was a beautiful land,

rugged, ever snow capped mountains

in the distance and Tom Haney came along
in his old jalopy. You know that, that

oh my God Bukowski would say. Why, why
did I start with crap like that?

That isn�t real. And so how does
post office begin?

What was the first line?
It began as a mistake.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: I mean what a great
opening. Then, then the reader thinks

well what began as a mistake? My life
you know as a postal worker for twelve

years and here�s the story. What did
he finally do? For all the pain,

for all the trouble of working there
he brings us a humorous novel.

DOM MUTO: My name is Dom Muto right. He
changed it to Tom which is legitimate,

Moto which is Japanese. I mean
didn�t he, didn�t he realize that st-,

[LAUGHS]. No slur against the Japanese.
It�s, it�s a, you know it�s a wonderful

name either way
but where�s his creativity?

He could have called me Graziano
or something you know.

INTERVIEWER: Was the book accurate?

DOM MUTO: The book was accurate.

TOM WAITS: You know my dad spend
a lot of time in the bars

so I was drawn to, to places
like that dark places.

My dad drank in the afternoon in really
dark bars. And um so I, I guess that�s

how it began and of
course it�s much more than that.

But, but uh the place that I hooked

into him was the fact that he was
um, seemed to be a writer with common

people and street people and looking in
the corners of, the dark corners where

no one seems to want to go
and certainly not write about.

TOM WAITS: And um so yeah he seemed
like the, he was the writer for the

dispossessed and he
really didn�t have a voice.

JOHN MARTIN: I sold that collection

to the University of California, Santa
Barbara, for fifty thousand dollars.

They were all first edition. This is

back in the mid-sixties and fifty
thousand dollars is fifty thousand dollars.

And that�s what I started with.

And by the, after about two years
or three years because I wasn�t working,

I had no other income, I got down to
five hundred dollars. And I thought

well it�s back to work. This has
been a great run but it�s over.

JOHN MARTIN: And then that week for the
first time more money came in then went

out. And at that point
Bukowski and I were on our way.

B-ROLL

In 1975, Bukowski
published his second novel.

The protagonist Henry Chinaski drifts

from town to town drinking, fighting
and working numerous blue-collar jobs

CARL WEISSNER: Anybody feeling the ups
and downs in a capital society feels

good reading about a guy who�s actually

preaching the refusal to work. But what
[INAUDIBLE] preaches is the refusal

to work not the negation of the
Protestant work ethic but you know

as a fundamental wrongness of it all, the
incredible waste of a life dictated by others.

CARL WEISSNER FRIEND
and GERMAN TRANSLATOR

STEVE RICHMOND: He was a magic man.
I saw him shrink once actually.

Steve Richmond
FRIEND, POET

STEVE RICHMOND: He, I was at uh,

Linda King had a party and she invited me
and I should, I probably shouldn�t have

gone because he didn�t invite me.
Linda King was ferociously flirting with

every man there, it was
very awkward, kind of silly.

LINDA KING
ARTIST, GIRLFRIEND

STEVE RICHMOND:
So at the end of the party

there�s like eight or nine people
left and I�m next to the door and then

out of nowhere he�s, he�s at the door,
there�s eight or nine of us and he just

started this rage. He�s about six
foot, five eleven, six foot and I was

watching him and I didn�t understand

any of his words but it was a volcano
erupting. And everybody�s kind of st-,

stuck in place. And he started, I�m
looking at him. And he started

to reduce, reduce in size and height
proportionally I swear to God.

STEVE RICHMOND: I sw-, I believe in

God. I swear to God he was two and a
half feet tall. As uh, as I see my hand

now you know I saw him do it and I just
didn�t want to, I didn�t want him

to get big again so I turned around
and went right out the front door.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I was with my
girlfriend and she had her foot up there.

I was going in circles in the street,
stopping, starting, stunting.

Her heel did that when she�s bracing herself.
She thought we were going to die

but we didn�t. It�s a nice design.

I like it. The car�s
beginning to look like me.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: You know I used to
think a long time ago I was too ugly

for women but I found out women
are very strong people. If you have

something good to give them you know
like your feelings women are strong.

They, they don�t care
if you have one arm

or five fingers missing or
your nose blown off. If you just—

No such luck

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: Women was the book
that Hank was writing, was it,

when I met him. Yes as a matter of fact
because he was doing um what he called

research. It started out with a woman
who he had been with for a long time,

Linda King and uh he was
sort of breaking up with her.

LINDA KING
ARTIST, GIRLFRIEND

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: When he got a
little bit of notoriety women started

coming to him
and he had the opportunity

to sort of take his pick and just
sort of have experiences and

uh like a child almost. He was
discovering this whole world of women

in a way that he hadn�t.

And then he was involved with this
other one named Cupcakes O�Brien.

PAM MIILLER: I thought of him
more as a friend.

He was to me more of a father figure
and I didn�t take the

relationship that seriously.
I can�t say

that I ever was in love with him.
He would sing to me occasionally

the song that went uh, and to this day

I don�t know that I�ve ever heard it.
I don�t know if it�s a real song or if it

was one he just made up.
But uh it goes something like uh

[SINGS] mean to me,
why must you be so mean to me.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: [SINGS] Mean to me.
How can you be mean to me?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Oh how you can
you be mean.

JOHN MARTIN: So yeah he was crazy about
her and she had him at her beck and call.

In other words she didn�t care.
She could go off for a week and not

even think about him and he would just
agonize the whole week. You know that

one poem about the confused old
man driving around in the rain.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
Is it, is that Cupcake? No.

B-ROLL

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Oh all right. Go ahead.

You are waiting for her, yeah? No?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
No. She, she�ll be mad for a week.

B-ROLL

JOHN MARTIN: I remember once going over

to his place on Carlton Way and there
was a beat up old couch on the porch

in front and here�s these two
absolutely untouched beautiful blonde

Dutch girls waiting for
him to come home.

And they wanted to know where he was.

I said well I guess he�s at the track
but I�m meeting him at five o�clock and

they said oh we want to see Bukowski.

I said well what do you want to see
him for? She said oh to fuck him.

While reading your book, “Women”,
one could get the impression that for

you a woman is nothing more
than a behind and a pair of tits.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Oh come on.

You read it and that�s all you got?
You didn�t even get the parts where I,

I cried in bed because tears came to
my face because I�m, I invited two women

to have Thanksgiving me and uh
I didn�t know which one to go to.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I mean no there are
many moments in there where I look like

a complete asshole and I felt like one.
No, no I, I was just an, I just wasn�t

jumping into bed and fucking and
jumping out of bed. I�m sorry. It would

be nice for me to say that and pretend
I�m a tough guy but I�m not that tough.

But in your stories, love is always
a synonym for sexual intercourse.

That�s not too romantic is it?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
Where do you get this crap baby?

Love is a dog from hell.
That�s all. It has its own agonies.

It brings its own agonies with it. But
I mean I don�t know where you get your

concepts from man.
You�re really fucked up.

SEAN PENN: You know I remember that
there was a moment where he and I

talked about it in the sense
that uh accusations of misogyny.

SEAN PENN ACTOR, DIRECTOR SEAN PEAN:
Uh he said it really simply. You know

everybody who�s read it knows that on
a percentage basis uh I treat men worse

every time. You know? And uh, uh and,
and in essence he does because so, so

much is autobiographical and its
about making mistakes in a messy world.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Oh this is called
uh The Shower. We liked to shower

afterwards. I liked the water hotter
than she and her face is always soft

and peaceful and she�ll wash me first,
spread the soap over my balls, lift the

balls, squeeze them, then wash the
cock. Hey this thing is still hard.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Then get all the hair
down there, the belly, the back,

the neck, the legs. I grin, grin, grin and
then I wash her. Another kiss and she

gets out first toweling, sometimes
singing while I stay in, turn the water

on hotter, feeling the good times of love�s
miracle. Linda you brought it to me. Sorry.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: When you take it
away, do it slowly and easily. Make it

as if I were dying in my sleep instead
of in my life, amen. See?

I�m getting this way, sentimental.
Shit. Sorry.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: That�s the one that

I split with after five years.
It�s not a very good reading.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
Linda. I read you the wrong poem.

Shit. Getting softer and softer kid.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: And during that

time I met him at a poetry reading in
L.A. at the Troubadour but he was still

doing all this research with women
so I had no intention of becoming

a girlfriend or anything. So we just
sort of evolved a friendship and I was

somebody he�d always call on the phone

and he�d talk to me about all these
other women and then it just got more

and more involved and the women uh came
in and out and went through his life

and finally he uh, his
research was complete.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI:
And I ended up there.

They were all gone. He got rid of them.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: When they started
coming around I said now I�m going to

catch up on all that I haven�t had you

see. One night I was in bed with six
different women in a, in a row.

I felt, God I must be something.

But I wasn�t you know. I was just
catching up on my own background.

So finally I got ashamed of what I was
doing and I stopped.

But I got a novel out of it
anyhow. Yeah.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
Fair to middle and how�s yours?

What about that cross over
there on the mirror?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
That, well that�s Germany.

I was born there see.
This reminds me.

You know what kind of cross it is?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Not really.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Iron cross.

JOHN MARTIN: He had published little fragments in
magazines and in, and little chapbooks about his early life

and I really wanted him to write a, a novel about his life from
the time he was born basically until he graduated from high school.

BUKOWSKI AND HIS MOTHER CIRCA 1923

INTERVIEWER: What about this book that
you�re writing now? The book on childhood.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
Three quarters finished.

It�s a horror story and
uh it�s been harder to write than

theothers but I�ve tried to put in
some likeness and some humor so we won�t

really feel the other
grimness of uh my childhood.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: When he finally got

to the point where he could write
about his childhood I think that was a

cathartic experience for him. I mean it
was a struggle for him to write it and

it took many years for him to get, even
get to that point to be able to get,

get back in there and re-, relive it

somewhat by typing it out and
remembering certain terrible things.

And uh but I think by doing that it
really um, it, it relinquished him from

a lot of, of those terrors
and those terrible experiences.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: Bukowski�s

grandfather came from Germany
and somehow ended up in Pasadena,

California where apparently he was a

building contractor. And he had several
children, one of whom of course was

Henry Bukowski senior who was a

doughboy and went back to Germany as an
American soldier and in the little town

of Anderknock en Rein
met Bukowski�s mother.

They get together and
Hank is conceived and born.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: And they stay in
Anderknock for a couple of years then

come to the U.S. back to Los Angeles
and Bukowski�s father was a milk

deliveryman for a while, had a lot of
odd jobs. They didn�t have a lot of money

but they had a pretty nice place

on Longwood Avenue finally,
at least by the Depression years.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Twenty-one,
Twenty- two Longwood Avenue.

The house of horrors. The house of agony.
The house where I was almost done in

but not quite done. I�m still here
you see. Uh this is the lawn that I

manicured. I had to mow it both
ways. This way first then this way.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: And I had to get all
the hairs with the sheers. If I missed

one hair I got a beating, one hair.
It�s very hard not to miss one hair.

Try it some time. So I always got a
beating. The old man had a razor strap

he used to hang here and he�d just take
it off, drop your pants and your shorts.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I would stand about
here and he would begin. And I don�t

know how many lashes he�d give me but
they�d be hard, eight, ten, twelve,

fourteen. Of course you can�t help
screaming especially when you�re

six years old, seven years old.

As I got around to be about ten or
eleven or twelve I screamed less.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Instead I, last
beating I got I didn�t scream at all.

I just didn�t make a sound. And I guess
that terrorized him because that was

the last one when I didn�t make a sound.
So it�s just a terrible place to stand

and talk about it. I really don�t want
to talk about it too much.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: He was cruel man.
He beat me and beat me.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: She, she was German

and her expression was while he was
beating me your father is always right.

That�s all there was to it. I guess
he was right now and then but I figure

about eighty-six percent of
the time he was wrong as hell.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: Hank�s father�s values

were probably normal American values.
There�s nothing evil about him

at that level.
Beating a child was evil.

There�s the evil part. On the
other hand that was the tradition.

People did it all through
the centuries.

If you go back to Leviticus
if your son speaks against you you�re

able to kill him. So we�ve come
a long way since then you know.

It�s not like Henry Bukowski was alone
in the beating of the son.

BUKOWSKI PAINTING
OF HIS FATHER

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: And sometimes I feel
it happening to me you know when I�m

arguing with a woman or something
I feel kind of shitty and crappy and I�m

not quite just and sometimes I sense
my father�s blood in me,

the chicken shit blood that
I�ve got in me. It�s a bad feeling.

BEVERLY KNOX: This is a picture of Hank

from his high school graduation and
this is a picture that�s been touched

up as you can see. His face was really
quite pock marked. It was very noticeable.

He wasn�t interested
in having his picture taken.

BEVERLY KNOX:
He made sure that he was never

in any of the pictures
that the kids took.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: We all know what
acne is but acne vulgaris is sort of a,

an exaggerated form of that ailment and
he had to go all the way across town to

a doctor. They would stick into all of
these horrible huge puss filled things

on his face and on his neck and all
over his back, his arms and chest.

BUKOWSKI�S HIGH SCHOOL ROTC PHOTO, 1939

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: It finally
manifests physically when you�re

put down like that continually over
years and years, physically,

emotionally, mentally in every way.

JOHN MARTIN: You know that wonderful

chapter in Ham on Rye where he�s
standing outside his senior prom too

disfigured to go in and too ashamed
disfigured to go

in and he had wrapped toilet paper around
his head and then punched eye holes.

And the bleeding acne had come,

was starting to come through the
toilet paper and he just stood there and

watched all of the other children
graduating from high school and having

a wonderful time while
he stood out there in the dark.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I was on some fucking

bus with a girlfriend and here came
a guy walking toward us looking

for a back seat.
His scars were deeper

than mine and you know want to
know something? I was jealous.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Yeah. I said Jesus.
I said did you see him? She said yes I did.

I said oh shit. What
a beautiful man he was.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: Hank actually stayed
with his parents quite a long time for

a guy who was brutalized.
I have some

photos in 1944 and there�s Bukowski
with his mother and father in the back

yard of the house on Longwood. The
three of them are standing together

getting a photo.
So he may have hated

them in a certain way but he
always returned to the nest.

Why do you drive such a long way
to the laundry?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Because other
laundries use soap that make you itch

and all that. So this is the
best laundry in town that�s all.

B-ROLL

BONO: Too much, too little, too fast,
too thin or nobody. Strangers with

faces like the backs of thumb tacks.
Armies running through streets of blood

waving wine bottles. Bayoneting and
fucking virgins. Or an old guy

in a cheap room with a
photograph of Marilyn Monroe.

BONO: There is a loneliness in this
world so great but you can see it in

the slow movement
in the hands of a clock.

People so tired, mutilated
either by love or by no love. People

are just not good
to each other one on one.

The rich are not good to the rich.
The poor are not good to the poor.

We�re afraid. Our educational system tells
us that we can all be big ass winners.

BONO: It hasn�t told us about the
gutters or the suicides or the terror

of one person aching in one place
alone. The beads will swing. The clouds

will cloud and the killer will behead
a child like taking a bite out of an ice

cream cone. Too much. Too little.
Too fast. Too thin. Or nobody.

BONO: More haters than lovers. People
are not good to each other. Perhaps if

they were our deaths would not be so

sad. Meanwhile I look at young girls
skin, flowers of chance. There must be

a way. Surely there must be a way we�ve
not yet thought of. Who put this brain

inside of me? It cries. It demands. It
says there�s a chance. It will not say no.

B-ROLL

By 1978, Bukowski was ready to leave the
courtyards and apartments of East Hollywood

He and Linda bought a house
in San Pedro, California.

TAYLOR HACKFORD:
As Linda, the second Linda,

came into his life she hung in there
and he knew that she really cared

about him and she was there to stay.
She could hold her own with, with a lot

of Bukowski�s uh you know wild friends
but ultimately she had a certain focus

and I give her a lot of credit for
saving his life. I mean at a certain point

you know she got him out of East
Hollywood. They bought a place down

in San Pedro. It�s a great part of Los
Angeles. Not people really know about.

And you know probably added about
ten years to Bukowski�s life.

TAYLOR HACKFORD: Basically it allowed
him a different part of his life.

He continued to write and he continued
to get more and more famous.

TOM WAITS: He wrote through it all and
as he became more popular and became

more successful and famous really

he wrote about that. So he took you all
the way from flophouses to San Pedro

and where he�s living in a nice house with you know
neighbors who play golf and uh you know a nice car and uh so

he, he took you, he let you, he let you go with
him on a journey which was really great for me.

TOM WAITS
MUSICIAN

TOM WAITS: And that�s something

I looked up to, to take you
uh down the path with him.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: Barbe Schroeder

didn�t have enough money to make Barfly
the film yet and so he decided to get

some professional people and do
a documentary on Hank,

sort of interviewing him over a period
of several months coming over here

on weekends
for hours after hour after hour

and sitting inside and outside.
And one night he was interviewing Hank

and it had been a long day and Hank had
had three or four, five or six bottles

of wine and he was getting
a little belligerent.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I�ve always been used

because I�m a good guy. And women when
they meet me they say I can use this

son of a bitch. I can push him around.
He�s an easygoing guy. So they do it.

Do you know finally I
get to resent it a bit?

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: What do you resent?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Just being pushed.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: Pushed?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Yeah. Just being pushed.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: Why do you let
yourself be pushed by this kind of shit

you idiot? Why do you allow yourself
to be pushed by this sort of thing?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I�ve told you a
thousand times to leave. You won�t leave.

I told you I�m going to get
an attorney to tell you to leave.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: [TALKING OVER]
Wait a minute.

a minute. anything to do with it.
That, that doesn�t have

anything to do with it. Why do you
continually allow yourself to be pushed?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
Because I�m kind hearted.

I give the other
person another chance.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Mmm hmm. I�ve given
you dozens of chances. But you keep

pushing and pushing. And you keep
laughing at me. That�s why I�m going to

tell you I�m getting an attorney.
I�m going to get your ass moved out of here.

She thinks I don�t have the guts.
She thinks I can�t live without her.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I can move your ass

out of here so bright and so fast with
a Jewish attorney. You�re going to feel

like your ass is skinned. You think you�re
the last woman on earth that I can get.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Yeah well you better

start thinking. I�m turning
you over to the next.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI:
Next guy. He can have you.

I won�t be the least bit jealous.
If your [INAUDIBLE] the bullshit all

your goddamn stay out every night bullshit.
I don�t need the kind of woman you are.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: Night after night
going out what good are you? I�m going

to get my Jewish lawyer out of you,
out, on you and he�s going to get you

out of this house. Get out. And I mean
it was just mortifying.

And he, the camera was rolling

I mean they had a perfect thing going
there. This is pretty exciting.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: Why are you so
offended by me doing something else?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Because I live

with a woman or she lives with me
she doesn�t live with other people?

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: I do live with

other people and I�m going
to for the rest of my life.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: I know. I�m going to
turn you over to them. You see?

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: [TALKING OVER]
No, no, no, no.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: Fuck, shit.

You fucking cunt. You think you walk
out on me every fucking night.

You fucking whore. You bitch. Who do
you think you, I am? Just I�m going

to do this, sleep with other
people. You fucking shit.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI:
[SIMULTANEOUS CONVERSATION] I didn�t.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: That�s when I got
my guts. I never took it again. Never.

The next time he tried that I said

you son of a bitch you can, you can
scream your ass off at, at the clouds

in the sky and at yourself but you�re
not going to do it to me.

I�m not going to take it anymore.
And I�d just get up,

walk up the stairs and I�d listen to him
ranting and raving down here at nobody.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: Sometimes it�d go
on for about thirty minutes.

And just, just screaming out.

B-ROLL

In 1987, shooting began on “Barfly”,
directed by Barbet Schroeder

BARBET SCHROEDER: Mickey Rourke,
he didn�t like the idea of rehearsal.

Faye Dunaway she was ready
to rehearse as much as possible

and I wanted to rehearse because when

you�re on a tight schedule like that m-,
much better if you�re rehearsed.

BARBET SCHROEDER
DIRECTOR OF “BARFLY”

BARBET SCHROEDER: But uh no. So we had

to do uh without it and I
guess he wanted to stay fresh.

LIZA WILLIAMS: Well how could
Mickey Rourke portray Hank?

It�s an impossibility. Why didn�t they
get some old duffer? They wanted

Mickey Rourke to be uh Humphrey
Bogart and pick up

girls in the bar. Hank wasn�t like
that really. I remember there was some

really beautiful girls in there which weren�t
at all the kind of girls that Hank went after.

LIZA WILLIAMS
COLUMNIST, GIRLFRIEND

LIZA WILLIAMS: He went after people
who were slightly damaged.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: He really over did
it. You know the hair hanging down and

I don�t think the kid�s ever been
on skid row you know.

When the guy walks
in and he says oh I�ve been missed.

I should run for mayor. He didn�t get
it right because I�d walk in and I�d

say oh I�ve been missed.
I guess I

should run for mayor. See you don�t
brag it. It�s low key all the time.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: He had it all kind of
exaggerated, untrue, a little bit show

off about it. So uh no
it was kind of mis-done.

Hank�s experience making “Barfly”
inspired him to write another novel.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: And I found out that

Hollywood is more crooked and dumber,
crueler, stupider than all the books

I�ve read about it. They didn�t go

deeply enough into how it lacks art and
soul and heart. How it�s really

a piece of crap.
There are too many hands directing.

There are too many fingers
in the pot and they�re all kind of

ignorant about what they�re doing.

They�re greedy and they�re vicious.
They don�t get much of a movie.

BONO: I never got to meet him while
I was reading him. It was only later

after a really drunken night with
Sean Penn back in my house in Dublin

talking uh stupid rhymes really.

BONO
FAN

SEAN PENN: And he found out that he
was a great fan of Hanks and I said you

know I said that he was a friend of
mine. So he, he said no, no. I said yeah.

SEAN PENN
FRIEND

BONO: He was reciting you know some of
Hank�s verse and, and, and me back to

him and he got up, excused
himself to make a phone call.

SEAN PENN: And he says hey kid hell,
where the hell are you? I said well I�m

over here in Ireland and I�m with Bono.

And he says uh you know not. I
said ask Linda. He says who�s Bono.

BONO: It turns out that Hank�s old lady

had been to every U2 show uh since we
came, since we were like kids like a

garage band. She�d been
to every one of them.

She�d been to more
U2 shows than I�d been to.

SEAN PENN: And then he�s back on saying

you know if you guys play out here
we want to come. Well sure enough.

BONO: Invited him down, invited the
two of them down when we next played Los

Angeles, not ever thinking that
he would come. But they did come.

SEAN PENN: And he was fascinating to
him that the world had come to,

you know this wasn�t a political rally.
This was musicians on stage and this

many people and this kind of fandom and
this, all of a sudden in the middle of

the show uh he says,
he comes to the microphone

and he says this is
for Charles and Linda Bukowski.

BONO: And I think we got to the old
fucker uh because uh you know he,

I think we might have
moved him a little bit.

SEAN PENN: The crowd went crazy. They
knew who he was. And he was taken

off guard. You know uh he really was

and he got emotional I think and he
and Linda danced to the song together.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: Bukowski was

fortunate enough to see in his own
lifetime his own work be translated

into I don�t know, God knows how many

languages to make him more than a
comfortable living and to go out in you

know thirty or forty printings.

And you know that�s a very rare thing for
a poet. If he hadn�t made any money and

yet he had been able
to do all the writing

that would have been enough for him.
I�m absolutely convinced of that.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: And he would have
worked in a candy store if he had to or

shining shoes or he would have stayed

at the post office and retired
on some piddly ass little thing.

CARL WEISSNER: I�m afraid I have to
agree with John William Corrington and

the prediction that
he made in what 1962.

CARL WEISSNER FRIEND
and GERMAN TRANSLATOR

CARL WEISSNER: He was totally right. He
said by the end of the century Bukowski

will be known as the guy who has
liberated poetry from the clutches of

the academics and did what Wordsworth
was attempting to do and what

[INAUDIBLE] actually did. You know this

is the company that he put him in sixty
- two and nobody had heard of him.

Are you afraid
of death?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: No.

How old would
you like to be?

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: It�s not a matter
of how old you can become, how long you

can go having all your moxy. So I can�t
answer that. Because I think my life is

dwindling now. You know I went to the
track today. I came back from the track.

I looked down and I had on
one black shoe and one brown shoe.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI: So I said even though
I won two hundred and twelve dollars

betting on horses I looked down and
I said the light is dwindling old boy.

B-ROLL

In 1988, Hank contracted tuberculosis

He lost 60 pounds. He drank
no alcohol for several months.

After recovering, he rarely engaged
in heavy drinking again.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: He continued to
lessen the amount of alcohol intake

over the years even though he, that
meant he had to be less than his myth.

I think he found a kind of confidence
in himself of course when he became

successful. And that took away

a lot of the um psychological pressure
that had been on him for so many years.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: He didn�t need
to react so much.

He knew that he was a cause
of goodness and that he could be

a cause of goodness and um I don�t
think he felt that way about himself

in the past, in his early years
or in his mid years even.

TOM WAITS: And by the time he got to
The Last Night of the Earth Poems he�s

really a wise man and a very thoughtful
man and, and was not afraid to be

vulnerable. He was uh turning the, the
ball around in front of you and let you

see as many sides as
he could see himself.

JOHN MARTIN: There�s a thing called
the new formulism and there�s

a little group of people called the new
formalists and they want to go back to

sonnets and you know poetry at its most
structured. And to me that�s exactly

the wrong way poetry should be headed.

Oh this is a little New Year�s
reading that we did called Art.

JOHN MARTIN: And it�s one of his
greatest poems.

It�s just one word
above the other.

JOHN MARTIN: As the spirit wanes the
form appears. As an artist or a poet

or anybody loses his spirit, that first
brought them into whatever they do,

as that wanes they do get more
concerned with form and trying to

cover up the fact that they�re not writing
as well anymore by writing formal work.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI:
Pulp dedicated to bad writing.

That�s just is the Bukowski story right
there. Not that he wrote badly but that

he took chances. That was an
older man�s novel and yet it�s

so filled with a younger man�s
inventiveness and suppleness.

Hollywood got in L.A. let�s say from
this way and Pulp got in L.A. this way.

Right? And Ham and Rye
got in L.A. this way.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: Think about it.

And then the short story came on L.A.
that way and then the poems rushed

down the freeway this way.
You know it was that ruined landscape

of Los Angeles that he wrote about.
Pulp of course is a pure fantasy.

It isn�t the real life Bukowski. So a

fantasy though it�s the life of the
mind was something that was always

on his mind. The man was dying.

He was nearing the end of his life
and he writes about lady death.

NEELI CHERKOVSKI: That�s how he dealt
with his dying, to make art out of it.

In March 1993, Bukowski was
diagnosed with leukemia

He battled the disease for a year.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: It had been a long
haul and it was coming to the end

and he was in and out of consciousness in
the room at the hospital. We were just

sitting there with him not, just
whispering gently a little bit and just

being around him. And uh I was

sort of sitting a few feet by, towards
his feet and his head was in front of me.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: And, and I had been
looking over on the other side of his

bed to Marina his daughter and, and uh
I glanced at Hank and there were um,

he was emitting from his mouth um
little puffs like puh, puh, just gentle

little puffs. And I instantly realized
that these were his last breaths.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: I knew that that
was what was happening then and in a,

in a matter of several seconds I
suppose well I got up to him to come to

his face and hold him and um that
happened a few more moments.

And then he left and um … at that

moment his face became s-,
absolutely transparent and serene.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: Every, every
wrinkly scar or tension, everything

completely relaxed and there was an
utter tranquility that existed and

permeated everything at that point. And
it was so gentle and so pure and um …

he had a smooth face
like a newborn baby.

LINDA LEE BUKOWSKI: It was just
so smooth and soft like that.

HARRY DEAN STANTON: There�s a bluebird
in my heart that wants to get out

but I�m too tough for him.
I say stay in there.

I�m not going to let anybody see you.
There�s a bluebird in my heart

that wants to get out but I pour whiskey
on him and inhale cigarette smoke

and the whores and the bartenders

and the grocery clerks never
know that he�s in there.

HARRY DEAN STANTON:
There�s a bluebird in my heart

that wants to get out. But I�m too tough
for him. I say stay down.

Do you want to mess me up?
Do you want to screw up the works?

Do you want to blow my book sales in
Europe? There�s a bluebird in my heart

that wants to get out.
But I�m too clever.

I only let him out at night
sometimes when everybody�s asleep.

I say I know you�re there
so don�t be sad.

Then I put him back but
he�s singing a little in there.

HARRY DEAN STANTON: I haven�t quite
let him die. And we sleep together like

that with our secret pact.

And it�s nice enough to make a man
weep but I don�t weep. Do you?

B-ROLL

THE END

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